Vacation starting in T minus 3 weeks....

So Ive finally got down to it and started learning about the compositor in Blender.  The compositor controls colors and other visual effects by linking various nodes, to over simplify what it dose.

I want to get familiar with this especially for the eyes of my characters.  The previous technique I used was to just layer shrink-warped objects.  This worked alright, but could cause a problem on complex color layouts and ultimately limits my options.  It also doesn't provide the same amount of control in blending colors.

I could just go the easy rout and UV unwrap, put a texture on it.  But this method could cause problems if the resolution gets changed.  There is also the "real time" control factor to consider.  If I learn to use the compositor, then it's going to be useful for at least one of the ideas I have.  Some nodes can even be animated.

So in a nut shell, I'm going to be devoting time to learning composting on my vacation.


My next step to learn, which is also part of the compositor, is how to render in a "flat" anime style.  I found a video on youtube the other day that actually gives some really good tips on material/node setup and lighting setup. 

The recent renders I did are not too bad, but I feel I can do better.  I've seen some 3D models that were so well rendered, it was pretty hard to tell them apart from traditional 2D drawings.  So that's another goal I want to work to.  Since I'm going through the trouble of making fully animate-able models, it would be a sin not to make some anime cut scenes in my games eventually.

Mecha Shield Crafting 101

So I finally got the pro version of Unity and felt rich enough to get RPG maker Ace.  Needless to say I'm kind of broke.....  Mind you, if you consider some peoples hobbies, smoking and heavy drinking come to mind, it's not really that much.

RPG maker is nice for fun stuff.  I'm probably not going to use it for most of the ideas I have due to its obvious limitations.  I'm sure that I can think up some simple RPG ideas to get a game going.  I'll probably be getting or making more tile sets for it though, the ones included are very basic.  I'll probably make the most use of RPG maker when I need a breather from the usual fare.

I plan to get back into Unity when I have the heroins sprites done.  Then I'll work with the animation system and character controller scripts.  Then I'll move on to learning about scripting basic game logic and go on from there.

I finished the heroins weighting some time ago and decided to rework her "solid" armor parts and gear for a change of pace.  The weighting went well, but I still need to make corrective shape keys and emote shape keys.  I plan to get better at using the compositor also, so I can redo the eyes and make them a bit better.  Work is going fairly smoothly to say the least, considering how much time I have to fool around between work and chores.

While I was doing the gear I decided to redesign the shield.  As you saw in a earlier post, the shield had blades sticking out of the sides.  This was done because I plan to have the heroin use her shield for attacking, possibly in a combo.  I felt the blades looked a little flimsy and not very intimidating.  So I went back to the "drawing board".


This was version 2 that I came up with

It defiantly had that aggressive, battle ready  look I was going for, but the design was a little too wide and I kind of wanted the basic subtle look also.  So I was torn between two ideas that I wanted to implement.  A shield with sharp edges for slashing, but with bluntness for bashing also....  So I decided to go both routs!

I completely scraped the original, and sort of used the base as a starting point for a new shield design.  This is the design concept I came up with

The idea was to make a mecha blade shield that housed the blades when not in use.  This design was nice, but the blades where a little too big and I wasn't confident in my skills as a rigger to make this idea happen.  It did however give me the insight for the final model that I actually had in mind.

The blades aren't as big and impressive as the previous designs, but the shield turned out fairly mechanically correct.  The blades fold away nicely into the shield.  I also added hinges and pistons for the hatches to give a more believable look.  I learned a lot making this.  I had never rigged pistons before, but once I caught on to a couple of things I was doing wrong, everything fell into place.  I'm thinking of re editing the center side blades, I feel that I went a little overboard putting holes in the blades.  Overall I'm happy with this design and the way it turned out.  The stuff I learned while doing this will help me with a lot of other mecha/steam punk ideas I have floating around in my head.

I'll try and edit this post later and add a youtube vid showing the blades folding inside the shield and deploying again.  Rendering all the junk this shield has takes forever, especially the freestyle calculations.

EDIT: Here is the link for the youtube vid

Also some minor spelling and grammar corrections.

  

A simple and boring update on the long week.

Nothing really special to report.  Ive finished re-topologising the heroin, and I'm currently weighting and  readjusting parts of the mesh.

Weighting is so boring and tedious, but I'll try to get it done this long week.

I used my head this time and will weight and edit the mesh before making the cloths.  One of the problems that I had with the previous meshes I made is that I jumped into making the cloths before weighting and rigging. 

This technically isn't really an issue for someone that knows what they are doing and has a lot of practice and esperence, however, since I'm still relativity new to modeling and rigging I often make mistakes and have to correct them, these are often noticed as I'm weighting each vertex. 

Since I'm not going to use a mask for under clothing skin, I have to make sure that the mesh is in its final form, or suffer clipping problems later on.  I considered using a mask, but the heroin doesn't have that much skin that is actually covered :D. So I felt it was kind of pointless.

I'm also thinking strongly on getting RPG Maker VX Ace.  I don't plan to use this to make some of the really elaborate ideas I have, but it would be nice to prototype ideas, and possibly make some "cheap" and "fast" games.

I'll wait till I have a Unity pro license first though.  Even though I don't have any commercial game plan yet, I kind of want to get one before the Canadian dollar falls anymore and have to pay a fortune in conversion costs.  The good thing is that I'll be pre-ordering Unity 5 in the same time.  Since Unity announced Unity version 5, anyone that buys a Unity 4.x license now will get Unity 5 on release.

I'll see how much I have left after tax and conversion, before I decide to get RPG maker.  It dose sound like a fun program though.....